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CaptainBreakout

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Posts posted by CaptainBreakout

  3. Posted · Edited by CaptainBreakout

    Well, my kids are stuck completely dry for a month, game-wise.

     

    Allow me to explain my situation...

     

    The kids' preschool is "Waldorf-based". For those who are out of the loop of educational trends, the long and short of it means that the kids aren't supposed to have screen-time. Like... ever.

     

    Not that I'm abandoning this thread. Far from it. I think this situation actually could make it more interesting.

     

    Let's just say that there are some inconsistencies with the Waldorf philosophy in the actual practices of most of these schools, as far as what happens at home at least. I happen to know that the main instructor presiding over this little institution is another animation fan like myself. He's also got kids same age as mine, and I've got a pretty good idea of exactly which movies they've seen from simply observing their behavior.

     

    Nevertheless, me and ALL the other parents signed a no-media-for-the-kids contract. This was presented as a social experiment, and the staff is doing it too with their kids. It's also nice that they don't pretend they don't break the rules just like all the parents do. And anyway it's just for the month of February.

     

    We'll see how it goes in a month. We're going to compare notes. Maybe I'll conclusively prove whether or not Atari rots your brain after 40 years.

     

    Just being facetious. You know what's also great about preschool? Pink Eye!!! My kids certainly 'learned' about Pink Eye this week. AND it's not just for kids!... There's no stoping parents from getting involved in the exciting adventure too!

     

    Yep... currently my eyes are glazed over like strawberry poptarts... minus the sprinkles and hundreds of times more horrifying.

     

    My wife got it in her throat. Same bug, except in that location it's called Strep (antibiotics have been deployed, but just since this afternoon). If it wasn't for Advil she'd be unable to communicate in any meaningful way. Don't touch us, we're disgusting. In fact you might want to wash your hands after you read this.

     

    ... Um, Namasty or whatever.

    • Like 2

  5. Posted

    I know what you mean... This stuff is fun, but there's always the risk of frustration. Thanks for the offer of the spare Basketball if I have to go there.

     

    I might bust open the Mattel Basketball and see if I can see any creative way to solve it. I want to see if there's enough room to solder and glue a surface mount LED in there.

     

    I fixed an Entex Space Invader that way, with a couple of those half-sized teardrop red LEDs (just the cheap ones that come in bags of mixed LEDs if you've ever bought those from an electronic supply place). That worked perfectly... Can't tell at all that a repair was done except the little spaceship / bullet is just a tad brighter in those two spots.

     

    If I follow through with the basketball game, I'll post my findings here.

  6. Posted

    I still want a WICO Command Controller for the Intellivision. It's probably irrational since a Disc is part of the experience of playing the INTV, and most people agree that the WICO Command Controller is less enjoyable. I know... I already have one. I just want another one based on the hypothetical situation that I am playing INTV with a guest and both players want joysticks. All seems pretty unlikly, yet the desire persists.

  9. Posted

    p.s. - by the way Captain, sorry I lost touch with you back there a ways, but how's that Wico Intellivision treating you?

    Hi jatari87! Nice to hear from you! I like the thing still, and am still really happy about it. Thank you! Actully playing a game with it tho is usually more challenging than using the stock disc controllers. It is stiff. What they say about that is true.

     

    It's my go-to controller to hand to my young daughter (unplugged) when she wants to feel like shes playing the game with daddy.

     

    I'm still looking for a second one. I should post that in the 'whats your irrational want?' thread.

     

    Do I have anything to add to THIS thread right now? Um, lemme think. Not really...

     

    Oh wait actually... Anyone know a method of "fixing" a Mattel Basketball handheld? A couple of the LEDs are out on mine in the playfield.

     

    Fond memories of that one. My son likes it too, now. It might not have been my first red led game (or maybe it was), but it definitely dates far into the way back. Heh... And it's definitely HIS!

  10. Posted · Edited by CaptainBreakout

    Well shut my mouth! I actually know who Banana Twirl is. I mean, in my case that's because I have a little sister, and I recently transfered all out childhood VHS tapes to mpeg2s. For some reason I stayed in the room while the whole episode runs where she introduced herself. I blame my love of background noise while I'm doing other things, laziness, and curiousity since I vaguely remembered it.

     

    There's Berrykins. Also Plum Pudding changes sex. It's true. I remember being a little confused by this at the time. It prompted me to verify this with a Google search, and yes indeed Plum Pudding was a male up until that point.

     

    Also the Berrykins get locked into a giant salt shaker and get banged around against the wall for a considerable amount of time. Who wrote this stuff? American McGee?

     

    Okay anyways, something hilarious happened with Scrapyard Dog, before I forget. When it came time to pop it in, I showed my son the box, hoping for an entusiastic response.

     

    What I got was a sneer.

     

    "I don't like this ... Picture."

     

    "You don't like it?"

     

    "No... It's BAD!"

     

    Um, I thought... Yeah it is kinda bad.

     

    I started to regret buying this thing. Tower Toppler was cheap, but this one was considerably more pricy. I thought I'd treat myself to a still-sealed box since I couldn't find a loose cartidge. Also it was a bad day at work at the time of purchase. Even though I was fully aware of the quality level of the game when I clicked Buy, I still figured it must still be likable somehow. Here I was with my knife in hand. "Oh... Well okay are you ready?"

     

    I, due presumably to a new lack of self-assurance over the situation, raked my knife across the plastic wrap. The dull blade caught on a corner, which drove my knife down into the side of the box, damaging the hell out of it.

     

    So, after knocking the resale value of this thing at least 20 bucks in a single swoop, I proceeded to open the top while keeping my cool and trying to retain some false sense of excitement. I gave the freshly extracted cartidge to my son for him to examine. Fortunately my knife blade had missed it.

     

    "Eh... I don't like him." He said with a look of disgust, looking at the cartoon guy on the label.

     

    "I... I like it!" proclaimed my ever-supportive 2-year old daughter.

     

    I held on to that uplifting comment long enough to plop the cart in the 7800 and turn it on.

     

    Playing the game was hilarious, simply because my son was exactly right, and very articulate in expressing his distain for the lack of good design and aesthetics. I was forced to agree with him each time. We only played a minute or two.

     

    In the game, while going down into the dumpster (which was metaphorical), he said some of his best lines. "This game is bad! This room is too hard! It's yucky. I don't like this room." That's when I shut it off. He was right.

     

    So I won't get my money back. But at least it gives me some solice that I can share this experience here. That makes it worth a little more, you know, for the good of the world, dear reader.

  12. Posted · Edited by CaptainBreakout

    Last night we had another game session. This one was a little unusual tho since it involved... dun dun DUUUuun... The Atari 7800.

     

    Thanks to a very generous secret santa and a nifty new composite to HDMI upscanner (called, inexplicably, a "Ratsmart"), my kids and I dug into Atari's (or rather GCC's) reinvention of the video game... As it was touted.

     

    Hopefully the moderators don't move this to another sub forum. Please don't mind the system disgression, it's only going to be this one entry. Also, isn't a 7800 kind of a 2600 um... too? I know it's not really, but it sorta is on some level.

     

    So anyways... On to the games.

     

    While I was loading them into the garage

    game room (it was a cold night and I had to carry them one at a time), I left Food Fight on in the attract mode. They didn't seem all that interested. My son kept asking to play "wolf game". This puzzled me for a minute.

     

    I stuck in Oink (yay... 2600 qualifier). He looked at it kinda with distain. "No, not THIS game!" I kept asking him what he meant. I eventually realized that he was referring to a muppet show VHS tapes with a 3 Little Pigs bit in it.

     

    I was playing Oink while we were sorting this out (mom had given us a 45 minute limit, so every second counts). He started getting into it. At one point he pointed at the screen and said "What kind of wolf is THAT?!?"

     

    It was pretty cute. My two year old daughter just watched and absorbed all of this, except for one question. She looked at me and asked loudly...

     

    "Is... Is she eating it?"

     

    "Oh, the wolf? Yes. I think so," I replied.

     

    "Ooooh. Alright."

     

    She seemed satisfied with my answer.

     

    Anyway, even I got tired of Oink after a couple minutes. Also I think my son started whining for the muppet show. I got up and pulled down my two carefully chosen eBay 7800 purchases.

     

    "This one's about a frog, and this one's about a dog," I announced. I handed my son and daughter a boxed copy of Scrapyard Dog and Tower Toppler, respectively.

     

    "So, which one first?"

     

    They both looked at each other's games, then each other. They both said something along the lines of "Frog one."

     

    So Tower Toppler it was.

     

    I knew this was a tough game, and I'd played it a decade ago on the Atari800 (or it might have been the Apple II) under the name Castlian. Yes the game is tough. I was dieing pretty much immediately, and since the controls take some getting used to (and all I have right now is the ProLine), my reaction time was strictly bad. I was just watching balls and other floaty bulbous baddies just wander over and kill me.

     

    It was pretty embarrassing. Fortunately, my kids were along for the ride with me, and they were watching me get better and better. A half dozen resets later and my kids were right there with me, navigating up the tower and negotiating lifts and bad guys.

     

    Both my daughter and son were doing the peanut gallery style cat calls and offering toddler advice while we were trying, over and over again, to get all the way up the first tower.

     

    At some point my son started reading the box and saw the screenshot of the submarine bonus level. He asked me about it and I told him that I think you get to ride a submarine when you get to the top of the tower.

     

    Just when the top of the tower was within reach, the tension level would build so much. My son would say "I Really Want To See Submarine!!!"

     

    This comment was responsible for starting several more games then I expected.

     

    Happy to say... FINALLY.... I finished tower one.

     

    And yes, there is a submarine level. Its very impressive and looks like something out of Thunder Force III. I didn't get much of a chance to enjoy it because my son was asking about a million questions regarding what we were seeing, all in rapid succession. Good thing the level seems to be strictly for bonus points because I'm certain I would have died if it were possible.

     

    The next tower pretty much immediately killed me with a disintegrating block as soon as I moved right. Game over. Ok, enough Tower Toppler. That was a positive.

     

    I think I'll do Scrapyard Dog as a second post... I'm gonna hit Post now so I don't do something dumb and lose what I just wrote above. If I don't finish tonight I'll catch you all soon.

    • Like 2

  14. Posted · Edited by CaptainBreakout

    Yeah, these games are all very interesting, especially since each can usually be understood from the ground up if one really looks into how they work. There are always some very clever ideas inside. A voyage of discovery in each one.

     

    Early pinball games were EM machines, and early video games were discreet logic games (aka no CPU). Despite this, even the pinball games should be considered computers, if you ask me, since they were capable of processing math for their very specific purpose. The EM pinballs evolved into marvels of complexity. As a "central processing unit", an EM pinball game might even fit that description without too much of a stretch.

     

    Anyways if you are just gauging interest, I'm sure there's a lot of members here besides myself who think these things are as nifty as you do. You might need to get more specific if you want to have a deeper conversation about them.

     

    I have had my head inside a dozen or so of the arcade variety of these games, and they are always a blast to work on. I maintain a KH Keeney 'Big Six' machine from the late 30's. In addition to being a family heirloom, it's also probably the last working one on the planet. No joke. I had to replace each and every solenoid with Williams 70's era assemblies. And the whole thing is full of oil-cloth wires... Anyways... I could go on. It's a labor of love.

     

    Anyway, yeah... Got any specific stories about an EM machine, anyone? I'd love to hear em myself.

    • Like 1

  15. Posted

    I think it happened to me as well... in this case the ball is in the one column where the surface is considered to be a horizontal line, so no left/right movement is added, and apparently here the ball has lost all of its left/right momentum. I also considered this to be realistic, so I left it in. It can also happen in other parts of the table in certain locations.

    I like this. In every real pinball game I've played extensively there is always SOME place where a ball can get 'stuck' on a flat surface, even if it's only 1mm. Conditions have to be just right. It's kind of magical when it happens.

    • Like 1

  16. Posted · Edited by CaptainBreakout

    Reflecting the sentiments of many on the thread, the stories are very cool!

    Maybe give Fishing Derby and Strawberry Shortcake Musical Match-Ups a try.

     

     

     

    Love the old Sesame Street, Still got an old small Magic Mumford plushy :thumbsup:

    We love Magic Mumford! I wish they made more merchindise of him... He's in our story books tho. Ah La Peanut Butter Sandwiches!

     

    I know what you mean about these stories. I love reading them at least as much as writing them.

     

    Strawberry Shortcake Musical Mix-Up received kind of a Meh response, but that was a year ago. We should revisit Fishing Derby for sure soon.

  17. Posted

    I'm just so glad the game is done. So many of these ambitious projects never get completed- here's to the exception!

     

    Also a major step towards getting my arcade game fixed and something I'll be super happy to see on the shelf, not to mention play.

     

    Let's hope we can all buy this thing soon.

    • Like 2

  18. Posted

    Thunder Force III (Sega Genesis)

    The Ultimate Doom (PC-DOS)

    Super Street Fighter II: The New Challengers (Sega Genesis)

    nice on Thunder Force III. I think that was the last game I played all the way through.

     

    I just wanted to add my batch, since it's weird...

     

    Polaris

    Alpha Beam with Ernie

    Oscar's Trash Race

    ... All on 2600... With my kids.

     

    Prior to that (with my nephew last week)...

     

    Rebooteroids (Jaguar)

    Epic Pinball (PC DOS)

    Electronic Pinball (PC DOS)

    • Like 1

  20. Posted

    I love these stories.

    Do your kids have an affinity for the Sesame Street characters? I would think that would be less common nowadays since it's no longer on public TV. Though I would guess Elmo is still on a certain brand of diapers?

    Yes... Check out the curtains in their bedroom!

     

    post-31593-0-31673900-1547313344_thumb.jpg

     

    .. yep those are Sesame Street characters playing, basically, Pac-Man.

     

    The thing is tho, as much as my wife and I love Sesame Street, but we both kinda hate Elmo. We just think he's annoying. It sucks that he took over the show around 1990.

     

    So the challenge is finding Sesame Street material prior to about 1985 or so. Since I frequent flea markets, that's doable.

     

    And we've found a ton of cool sesame Street stuff sans Elmo. My daughter's favorite character is Prairie Dawn. And Im proud to say my kids can name even those more obscure characters (Sherlock Hemlock for example), but have no idea who Elmo is.

    • Like 2

  21. Posted · Edited by CaptainBreakout

    ... and low and behold it did.

     

    Yioe running out of energy to write. Had to have a discussion with my wife about which preschool we're trying for...

     

    I wanted to write a few things about how Oscar's Trash Race was a complete error filled mess. There was more then met the eye tho. The fact that Oscar was pink should have tipped me off.

     

    It also did really horrible things to the display if I attempted to use my A/V modded 7800. That should have tipped me off too, but I haven't had the console for very long so I'm still getting used to it.

     

    It turned out I had a PAL cart of Oscar.

     

    I found this out after trudging through some really confusing visuals for a half hour with my kids.

     

    I doubt this will ever happen to anyone else ever, but yeah... If your copy of Oscar's Trash Race contains a pink Oscar and looks and plays horribly, and your cart label is surprising clear of acti-plaque, you have a PAL cart! Do not play it. Your kids will be distraught.

     

    As far as carts go, I don't have many doubles. In fact I have almost none. But for Some reason, I remembered I had another really crusty copy of Oscar's Trash Race at the bottom of the box of spare Atari stuff in the closet. I dug it out and plugged it in after the kids went to bed. Sure enough. I think "I'll be damned" was what I said in response to a title screen I could actually read... Or it might have been in response to Oscar being green. Can't remember now. I'm tired. I've been having dreams about being rejected from preschool. Take it easy on me.

     

    PS... I couldn't resist telling my kids... "You know Oscar's Trash Race, and how you kept asking me why he was pink? I fixed it."

     

    "You fixed it?"

     

    "Yeah."

     

    "Why?"

     

    ...

    • Like 2

  22. Posted · Edited by CaptainBreakout

    Anyways, so now there have been a few days where we've had some gaming nights. Here's a few things I've learned.

     

    My daughter does not respond the same way to Polaris as my son did. In fact I figured out fairly quickly that the game was causing her some distress.

     

    The second scene where the sub must navagate through the underwater caverns held her interest, but as soon as we got back to the surface levels she started wincing and making uncomfortable sounds.

     

    I asked her, "You don't like this game?"

     

    My three year old son looked at me and said, "I think it's 'cause you're shooting at stuff."

     

    Wow. Poignant observation.

     

    We finally got to the Sesame Street games... We started with Alpha Beam with Ernie.

     

    Very successful aside from discovering one of my two Kid's Controllers was factory defective. Slight hitch there. Thankfully I had two.

     

    Ernie was a big hit. My son figured out how to load up the rocketship in about fifteen minutes. The payoff is really good and something that was genuinely fun as a dad to witness and participate in. It was also nice too since he started out by saying "I want to see rocket move." ...

     

    (cont.)

    • Like 1

  24. Posted

    I just want to express a little something... I am extremely excited this project. Partially because SiO2 recently rocked my world with a 7800. Partially because the amazing talent that's going into it... but also for one other big reason...

     

    I own a complete but non-working Baby Pac-Man game.

     

    I went to great lengths to find one several years ago, as I love both Pinball and Pac-Man and unusual things that are awesome. I have every intention of fixing it. I'm no stranger to fixing pinballs. I have a Black Knight, Black Hole, Playboy, Caveman, and several more under my belt. It just so happens that this game is the next one on my list, patiently waiting for me to get back to it (this aspect of my hobby took a long break due to recent fatherhood). Of all the pinballs I've had my head inside, I know that Baby Pac-Man is probably going to be the hardest. I've been simultaneously looking forward to and dreading tackling it.

     

    I've only played a 100% working Baby Pac-Man machine on one session many years ago. As I said, I'm extremely excited about this 7800 version- for a variety of reasons but also because I hope to use it to actually playtest and troubleshoot my arcade machine.

     

    If anyone in this thread ever wondered if this game, once completed, might be used for this purpose- I can assure you that yes... it will be, sooner rather than later I'd say.

    • Like 7

  25. Posted

    If mattsoft doesn't wind up having one, vintagegamecrazy has a Ballblazer 7800 cart + manual he said he'd part with for $15. Way better than removing the pokey from your 400.

    Thank you. I might hit him up, simply because Ballblazer is a game I'm fairly interested in, and if he's got a manual too that's always a plus for me.

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